> There has been a “significant uptick in inauthentic amplification” of posts on social media linking 5G to the coronavirus, UzZaman said, indicating that there could be a coordinated campaign and bot accounts involved.

Is there a correlation with anything that gets popular then sees an uptick in 'inauthentic activity'. I know most of the attention is going to be looking into 'dangerous' buzzwords but I'm curious to see what the standard baseline is for every trend, then seeing how it compares. Especially FUDy topics.

Social media 'bots' by their very nature would be picking up on any trend in order to boost their positions from which to seed other stuff. Assuming that's what they do (and actually have an audience beyond other bots which follow them)...

One thing being spread by bots doesn't point to a cause/effect by itself.

> the previous 24 hours, there had been more than 50,000 posts about the topic on Twitter and Reddit

I've seen a ton of people talking about 5G also, almost entirely making light of it or directly making fun of people who believe it. It's now commonly being cited whenever 'conspiracies' and COVID come up.

The raw statistics don't really scare me much, especially 50k".

I remember since I was in high school when the first cell towers (well before 3G) were going up and there was a small campaign by a girl in my class who lived on a farm next to another farm which got one. They were claiming it caused cancer and other stuff.

5G/cell towers aren't a very unique point of blame as much as people flailing about in the face of a mystery and pointing the finger at the same small group of common enemies from the past (not that the real 'enemy' isn't actually among them, but it's safe to be skeptical when they are brought up...).